Chargers keeping local options on table

Aide says stadium plan is unlikely this season

POSSIBLE SITES

Oceanside:
The 90-acre site of a former drive-in theater north of stateRoute 76

Escondido:
An unspecified spot near state Route 78 and Interstate 15

San Diego:
Downtown, near Petco Park

Elsewhere:
Las Vegas and San Antonio have shown interest, and there's a move afoot to build an NFL stadium in City of Industry.

The San Diego Chargers will play at Qualcomm Stadium this season, starting with tonight's first exhibition game. Beyond that, the team won't make any guarantees about where it will tangle with opponents.

More than three years into a stadium search, the Chargers' toughest foe remains a bad economy that has stifled lending.

Mark Fabiani, the Chargers' point man on the search, said the effort will continue despite the economy and the team's persistent failure to find a suitable spot in San Diego County.

So far, the team has studied and dismissed potential sites in National City, Oceanside and Chula Vista. In recent weeks, Fabiani has been considering a new site in Oceanside, exploring potential options in Escondido and discussing the viability of a stadium in downtown San Diego near Petco Park.

Despite the interest, Fabiani said he doesn't expect a proposal for months.

“Given where we sit, it's unlikely that a plan surfaces before the end of the season,” he said. “We certainly hope to be doing what we're doing next year, which is working on San Diego County. That's our hope. That's our goal.”

Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., who examines the sports business, said the duration of the search poses problems for the team to relocate within San Diego County.

“If it was going to happen, you'd think it would have happened already, so I think there's good reason to suspect this is an insuperable challenge for them,” Zimbalist said.

Officials and developers in other cities, including San Antonio, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, have shown interest in landing the Chargers, but Fabiani said the search remains locally focused.

The team began asking for a new stadium in 2002, saying Qualcomm Stadium, now 42 years old, created too little revenue for the team to stay competitive. The team initially considered building a new stadium on the current 166-acre site in Mission Valley, but contends the bad economy and building bust made that impossible. It started searching for a new site in 2006.

In May, developer Perry Dealy and a group of local business leaders suggested keeping the Chargers at the site by building a hotel, condominiums and commercial space alongside a new stadium. Lacking support from the Chargers or Mayor Jerry Sanders' office, the idea quickly faded.

More recently, the team has willingly been excluded from early discussions between the Mayor's Office and San Diego State University to use some of the Qualcomm Stadium site for student and faculty housing, research facilities and a park.

The Chargers' lease expires in 2020 and gives the team from Feb. 1 to May 1 every year to notify the city of an intent to move. The team's cost to break its lease is $54.6 million next year but the amount falls to $25.8 million in 2011, which has led to speculation that if the team departs, it would do so in two years.

Suitors outside San Diego County have stepped forward.

In years past, the mayors of Las Vegas and San Antonio — smaller markets without NFL teams — have expressed interest in the Chargers, and Los Angeles developer Ed Roski is pushing to build a stadium in nearby City of Industry.

There is talk of luring one or even two NFL teams — from Jacksonville, Buffalo, Minnesota, St. Louis, Oakland, San Francisco or San Diego — to that stadium.

Locally, the Chargers don't have a lot of options at the moment.

•In Oceanside, the team is considering, at a private developer's request, the 90-acre site of a former drive-in movie theater on the city's northern border. In June, Fabiani said the site's proximity to the Oceanside Municipal Airport would make it difficult to build a 200-foot-tall stadium. On Thursday, he went further, saying the airport would have to be shut down for a stadium to be built. Such a scenario seems unlikely after the Oceanside City Council's unanimous vote Wednesday to finalize a 50-year lease with the airport's private operator.

•In Escondido, civic leaders and city officials, including the city manager and the mayor, have met to discuss building a stadium near state Route 78 and Interstate 15, so transportation to games would be easy. Escondido land-use attorney Dave Ferguson said the business leaders expect in the next 30 to 45 days to take a hard look at potential costs for buying and improving the land and building a stadium there and, if found to be feasible, ask the city to consider the idea officially.

•In San Diego, Fabiani continues to meet with the Mayor's Office and the City Attorney's Office to give updates on the Chargers' search and toss around ideas. Fabiani said whenever he discusses possible sites with anyone, a downtown stadium comes up. “It's the first thing people talk about,” he said. “You tell them what you're working on, and everyone asks about downtown.”

Fabiani said he remains optimistic that the team will stay in San Diego County and takes heart that Chargers President Dean Spanos hasn't thrown in the towel.

“Hopefully,” Fabiani said, “once the economy turns around, we will have secured a publicly acceptable site, have a financing plan that people are comfortable with and we'll be able to go into the credit markets.”